Monthly Archives: January 2015

We have here a familiar parable which, unfortunately, is so well known that the actual message is lost in the discussion of details. We begin by saying that in King James’ time, a penny was an amount of money typical of a laborer’s daily wage. There were workers who worked a full twelve hours, and others who worked for less hours, down to the last-hired who only worked one hour.

All things considered, the solution of the issue raised might be the only one that might actually be fair.

We know the story of Paul’s conversion that happened on his journey to Damascus. We certainly see that God is going to get what God wants! But what of the Gospel lesson?

In the Gospel, we come across some of the most often mis-used and abused sayings in all of Christendom, most often used far away from the original context. Look closely, and you can see again the promise of fulfillment!

Something here that your Sunday school teacher didn’t mention? We hear too sickeningly much about “God’s will”, “God’s time”, and “God’s higher plan”, but we don’t hear enough about one of the main points that the Bible tries to get across: fulfillment”.

You can’t frost a cake until the cake itself has been baked. Likewise, the world arranged itself in a manner that was not only advantageous, but necessary for the work of Jesus to spread faster than authorities could move to suppress it!

Secrets revealed? The Gospel reading is the Finding in the Temple, in which Jesus tarries around in the Temple a few days after Mary and Joseph left Jerusalem to go back home to Nazareth following the Passover celebration. It is also the last thing we read about him as a child. The next event in his life that we will read about is his baptism by John the Baptist.

All of this leaves room for much speculation. We can, of course, speculate and surmise from what we find in other sources and tradition.

The reading in place of the Epistle is explicit in its prophecy. And the Gospel reading goes well with it, and goes further with the point we found in last week’s readings. In stupidly simple terms, nobody is going to stand in God’s way.

Since Joseph had no more trust in Herod’s son Archelaus than in Herod, he made use of the same gap in jurisdictions that would figure much later in Jesus’ trial. Joseph went to Galilee and to Nazareth, fulfilling yet another prophecy.